Friday, February 02, 2007

Veena concert in Pondy Jam

Jamming up in music need not necessarily mean fusion music.It can be any form of music And still can be jammed up with the moods of the audience!Freedom Jam is one such concept of taking music to the audience by the artistes - for free. It is the voluntary act of musicians to come together to perform one after the other on the same stage. Thats is, the audience get to listen to different types of music on the same platform, same day.Born in Bangalore, Freedom Jam has a monthly 'avtar' by name Sec-sat Pondy at the erstwhile French colony Pondicherry, now Puducherry.For the Pondy music festival, which took place during late January this year, the steps to Gandhi statue on the beach was a venue! Musicians sat on the steps and performed to the 'sruti' set by the waves in the sea!Another venue was the park!But my post is about the veena concert held at the Alliance Francaise auditorium. Following a vocal music concert, which set the mood for a lighter concert - the vocalist sang Sri Satyanayaranam, in the raga Shubha pantuvarali - the three young artistes from Chennai took their traditional instrument to the stage.Unusual accompaniment of Tabla for the veena concert. That's a kind of jamming up!Some brisk, some slow, one popular song, one not-so, though short, the concert was complete. Nithyashree, Ajitha, Lakshmi played the veena and Vageasan played the Tabla.All the college kids thoroughly enjoyed the trip to Pondy, the concert, the eating out and the night travel on the East Coast Road, back to Chennai.And I accompanied the kids, as they are all students of my Guru - Kalyani Ganesan!

1 comment:

So if you are planning a weekend trip, try and freeze it for the second weekend of the month.

You could soak in music concerts on one stage - mostly rock, metal and vintage pop. Sec Sat - thats the show and it is now held at the seaside Seagulls Restaurant at the south end of the beach road, behind the Park Guest House.

And its free.Lots of bands from Bangy ( Bangalore) drive down to perform here.

To offer a double whammy, there is going to be a Heritage Walk on Second Sunday of the month.A walk throuigh the French, Tamil and Muslim old quarters of this town.

Which means that you can soak in the music on Sat, hit a bar restaurant later that night, sleep till 9 am and run across for the 9.15 am Pondy Heritage Walk ( 2 hrs). The walk though will be charged. It may not be a walk - maybe a cyclerick tour since summer is with us!

If you want to explore Sec Sat Music and the Heritage Tour, email to vincentsjottings@gmail.com. Or to pondyjam@gmail.com

About Me

Paper and pen have always fascinated me. When in school, I got published in a kids' magazine; I also got published in the Youth supplement of a leading daily for a couple of times. My career too gave me an opportunity to write long credit proposals similar to analytical reporting in journalism. Changing career, I began writing for financial websites and now I write for leading websites and newspapers on arts and classical music. I edit and publish the online magazine for Chennai kids - www.yocee.in and its ePaper YOCee. I love to see the young people write as much as I love to.